Tales of Xillia

And so, Squiddy has recently completed Jude’s quest and finished the bonus dungeon slaying the Golden Knight, unlocking the true powah of the devil weapons. What an accomplishment!

I played through Jude’s quest on hard and the Knight took me nearly 2 hours to take down. My level was in the mid 80s. He’s a tough cookie. You fight him in three stages, the first he is just 1, then he splits into 2, and then finally 3. Each version of him looks the same, apart from colour, and is basically a shadow of your entire party throwing nasty artes at you. I died a few times in the beginning, unable to master the third phase of the battle. I managed to tone my strategy and succeed in the end.

After all of that, I looked through my titles and saw I nearly had some of them done, so I went after the Golden Knight three more times until I snagged them and managed to upgrade my shops to level 100. I was in the mid-late 90s by that point and decided it was time to knock out Milla’s quest for my NG+ playthrough.

I had nearly 6k grade to spend in the NG+ shop which basically is a list of what you want carried through into the play through. I chose all XP boosts, devils arms, shop levels, costume items, accessories, and a couple other things I’ve forgotten. It was tempting to have my levels carry over completely, or even half, but I decided food XP boosts and the x7.5 XP boost would solve my problems. Also, having the devil arms rated in the 3k’s for damage meant I’d be sailing through and I pretty much am. I was in the mid 50s before getting to Hamil and already I’m at the tail end of the game pushing on 70.

I don’t have any real strategy for this play through other than barreling through the story. I’ve skipped most battles and sub-quests and have been watching only the cut scenes which are different from Jude’s. Thus far, there have been scarcely any. The differences are only slight, you primarily have Milla’s side of the story for the moments when the party is split, so when you bust into the research lab, when you’re captured at Fort Gondala, when Mila is healing up in Laronde, when you’re split up after the events at the marsh, and then all the times when it’s just you running around killing time. It’s… really hardly worth the extra play through. Granted, it has given new insight into a few events; I could easily pass on them. They don’t offer anything new to the story.

I nearly broke my one-game-at-a-time thing to deviate for some Brothers, or Dmc, or anything else, actually. I knew, though, that if I did, the trend would continue and I would have more starts than finishes, so I just took a break to read the book I got in the mail: Star Wars Galactic Phrase Book and Travel Guide. It’s been a humorous read and I’m happy I’m getting more of an attention span.

Thoughts So Far

I’m so glad I don’t have to talk to everybody like in older RPGs that would be littered with tons of people with hardly any of them worth the reading time. I’m also happy that people with events/quests have a special icon to identify them. That saves me from having to talk to the few people you can talk to.

I’m starting to feel burnout setting in. I’ve clocked in 47 hours and I’m ready for the game to be over. I’m going to press onward and set different goals to work on to see if it alleviates things, but aside from that, I’ve been enjoying the story.

Progress

Well, I was able to save Governer Cline. We rode a green vector paper airplane of spiritual arte greatness (dumb) and Alvin shot the core. Citizens saved and then boss battle time. A really big bug that looked pretty cool, actually. I liked its wings. I took care of an event for some scientest studying the affects of human artes use on spirit climes then went back to the story for our second death. The first being Professor Haus. I didn’t expect Cline to die. I’m… really not sure why. The tone of the game has been fairly light.

Milia was paralysed for a bit and we get to see how much of a dick Jude’s father is. I wanted to bite his face off. She got healed and we continued onward and it turned out I was right about Alvin; he wasn’t exactly a good guy, but he might redeem himself. We’ll just have to see.

I won the tournament in Xian Du and hooked back up with Alvin and Elize. Some weird stuff is happening with Teepo. I’m guessing a Spyrix was inside him or something, since the evil bad meanie Exodus people ripped something out of him and now he’s just a toy. Weird. I’ve also noticed the game hasn’t taken into account this plot development and results of tasks I had before this have a happy Elize and normal Teepo. The same can be said about the battle end clips. Oh, well.

The Plan

My shops are mostly in the 30s, so I’m planning on being ambitious and get them to 50, I’ve amassed a great number of materials and I only feed them their bonus materials.

I have a couple side-quests I need to do and turn in before I miss my chance, so I need to get in on that.

Also, I’d like to increase my grade and knock out a few titles. I’m going to work on the <3’s and I would like to work on Leia’s Elongating Staff titles and maybe a few of the other character’s specials titles.

Character Progress

With my pain medication working great, I thought I’d take this moment to scream at my tablet some more and work on another post. It’s and idea I had rolling around in my brain for awhile, now, and I decided to run with it. In short, it’s a series of journals detailing my progress and thoughts about a game. I’m starting things off with this one. There will probably be spoilers.

Lately, my gaming has consisted of me focusing on one game at a time. It’s not something I’ve ever been able to do since I first got into video games as a child and couldn’t get anything new until I finished the old. That is a great way to do things, but highly unrealistic for me now. How many new games did I get last year? 400+? Yet, with my foot in the condition it’s in and my lack of mobility, despite having a vast library of PSN titles to play, I’ve been strangely sticking to this one-at-a-time ethic. The current game on the table is Tales of Xillia.

I really don’t know what has possessed me to get this game other than the $10 PS+ discount. I’ve really not been able to stand the grind in eastern RPGs for years. Ni no Kuni and legend of Mana broke this habit by reminding me of why I even liked them to begin with. I’m really funny about games; I realise this. I will condemn one game only to praise another that is just like the one I left to burn in the fires of my hatred. It’s just the way things go. I’m very much a mood gamer and sometimes I can swallow mediocrity and poor writing and look past a game’s flaws, but most-of-the-time I can’t.

Thoughts So Far

Anyway, this is day three of playing this game and I haven’t had any gripes about it. I kinda don’t like the spider-web character development buy orbs for skill, stat, and special abilities (artes). I’ve found most of them are pretty meaningless with no great affect on your character at all and could have easily been handled by your usual this-is-what-you-get-at-level-x old-school method. You have to complete sections for the web to expand, so you end up with everything anyway.

The combat system is more active in a bashy sense. You mash buttons, unleash artes, chain them together, and block when you need to. I haven’t needed to. I might change the difficulty to hard because normal is actually quite easy so far.

The setting is pretty bizarre. Technology comes from spirits and follows a more magi-tech approach, but in this case it’s spirit-tech. Everyone has a mana lobe in their brain which is used to feed spirits that will grant you the ability to basically cast magic which the world heavily relies on. It’s interesting and all elemental-based.

Voice acting isn’t terrible, but I haven’t decided if Maxwell’s is good or shit. She’s an interesting character and not human, but she sounds too much like she’s trying to be ST:TnG’s Data, or just shit.

Progress

22 hours in and it seems like a lot has happened, but at the same time, it doesn’t. I stumbled onto a horrible thing my country is doing making a weapon powered by mana, and I’m all mixed up with this task of destroying it, but of course, things are complicated. Maxwell lost the Four and couldn’t summon them. The belief is they’re trapped in that weapon and recent events have revealed the King is behind it all. Maxwell wants to assassinate him, but isn’t that par for the course? We always kill the big bad villain in the end.

I went in the Gorge to rescue the governor and found another strange facility. I’m making the trek to the top to destroy the core and save all the people being farmed for mana.

The Plan

I’m going to finish this event and hopefully rescue Governor Cline, or at least finish this segment of the event and then see about finding a Peachberry Blossom to give those wretched little girls that won’t talk to Ellie. Those bitches aren’t friend material and need their heads bashed together like coconuts.

The next order of business is getting my shops to level 30 before progressing the story any further.

I’m also working on some grade farming and knocking out titles.

My Events List aka Quest Journal

The Crags of Bermia Gorge – Make your way from the summit to the interior!